The Five Times Series
by Morganabel
Summary: A collection of shorts, featuring the theme of "five times"
1. Chapter 1

**The Five Times Henry Tried to Kiss Natalie Goodman**

The first time Henry wanted to kiss Natalie Goodman was not the first time he had thought about it. She was, after all, a pretty and intelligent girl that he spent time in close proximity to. He had even thought about it before they ever talked. Sometimes she looked so tense during class he had wondered, in passing, what it would be like to kiss all that stress away. It had been a passing fancy, nothing more.

The first time he had known that he wanted, with absolute certainty, to kiss Natalie Goodman was in the music room. She had been standing behind him as he played. He couldn't even remember what he was playing, or if he had just been playing. She had been engaged in her favorite current pastime of why jazz was a waste of time, and the only way to go was classical. And she had just been so passionate, so alive in that moment, he had stopped playing and turned around.

"Natalie."

She had stopped pacing, and talking and stared back at him, and he forever everything and anything at once. Not because he was overcome by her beauty (though she was pretty, even more so when filled with life in addition to her normal sarcasm), but because she could be sofucking intimidating. And right then, he knew he wanted to kiss her but he wasn't sure how to go about it. He could just stand up and kiss her, but she was so damn skittish she would probably just kick him and run away.

Part of the issue was that she was classical music. Rigid and structured, never allowing a note to be out of place. There had to be a right way to do this.

"Um, Henry?"

He blinked, he must have zoned out. "Yeah?"

Natalie leaned down, close to him. For a passing moment, he stupidly thought that she just might want to kiss him, too. But, instead, she just tapped him on the shoulder twice, stepped back, and said, "You're being creepy again."

"Oh."

This was obviously not a moment to kiss Natalie Goodman.

The next time, Henry had been sure he absolutely must kiss Natalie Goodman was during their lunch period. Eventually, them hanging out ceased to be him listening in on her practice sessions, or her lingering behind while he played, it expanded to them engaging in conversation during class, and occasionally eating together. Typically, weather permitting, he sat outside under a large oak tree and ate whatever he had thrown in a bag that morning. Whenever Natalie did not join him, she had told him she would be in the library studying.

Contrary to what he had imagined, Natalie's lunch was not an offering of all the food groups, proportioned to the correct amount of servings needed daily. Often it looked thrown together, as though eating was a secondary thought, or she would have something she had bought from the cafeteria.

On this particular day in question, they had both brought their own lunches, but it had been spread out between them, and eating was more of a reach and grab thing rather than keeping to their own food.

He had been talking. Rambling, babbling, something akin to it. When he knew of nothing else to do, words had a disturbing tendency to just fall out of his mouth without any real control on his part.

This time, she had been the one to interrupt him. "This is ridiculous."

The sexual tension between the two of them? Uh, yeah, he'd have to agree. Out loud, he said, "What?"

"You." Oh, that. "You're such a bullshitter." Probably. But, at least, he believed most of what he said. At the moment. "Tell me, when you write papers for class, do you even know how to cite anything?"

Henry had laughed, "Are you telling me you want me to add footnotes to everything I say?"

She had pretended to think about it for a moment. The more time they had spent together, the more a playful side seemed to come out from her. "Yes, that is what I'm requesting."

He had tossed a carrot stick at her, and she had batted it away. "Probably not going to happen."

Then she did that thing she did sometimes, where her lips curled and it wasn't quite a smile but it was so close and it was so Natalie and then the bell rang and she was up and grabbing her books before he could even know what hit him.

The third time, Henry had been absolutely sure it would actually happen. They were in the music room, again, and their conversation had gone down the familiar road of debating jazz versus classical. By this time, he wasn't sure if either of them felt that strongly about either side, or if it was just fun to rile the other up.

He had been sitting on the piano bench, with her standing next to him, and with every fact they kept sprouting (Miles Davis went to Julliard), they seemed to end up closer and closer until (Mozart wrote poems about farts) until, until…

Nothing.

They had made eye contact, and the moment was palpable, but then suddenly she looked away and backed up. Natalie had quickly gathered up her things and left with a mumbled goodbye and excuse.

Now, to anyone else, this may seem like a bad sign. After all, in the same moment he had wanted to kiss her, she had fled from the scene as though she couldn't get away fast enough. But Henry wasn't just anyone else, and neither was Natalie.

Because, Henry now knew for sure that Natalie Goodman wanted to kiss him, too.

The fourth time Henry decided to try and kiss Natalie Goodman (and actually physically did try) was because of a word.

Mouth.

The sentence structured around it (I don't put anything in my mouth that's on fire) didn't matter, because he only heard that one word. Though, he attempted a response to that (I guess that's a good rule), it didn't matter because she had said the word mouth and it was turning around in his brain and her mouth was just so close he couldn't not do it, so he had leaned in and she had frozen up, until he got close and then she turned away.

Her life is a disaster, she had claimed. She always made claims like this, surrounding herself in the darkness. If only she would stop filtering out the light that came along with the darkness, and that they could be good for each other.

So, like they always did, the words came tumbling out of his mouth, and he tripped and sputtered over them until word vomit occurred. (I'm trying to tell you: I love you.) Eventually he got it all together and was able to work past his smoke addled mind to vocalize what he wanted, and the fifth time he tried to kiss Natalie Goodman…

Well, he didn't try, because she tilted her head up, and walked towards him, rather than away from him, and their lips met.


	2. The Five Times Natalie Couldn't Deny

Natalie Goodman hadn't meant to become friends with Henry Grant. It had just happened. And, as someone who had every minute detail of her life planned, the ease of which this occurred disturbed her. It was just, one minute he was there and she thought he was trying to push her out of her rehearsal time early, but then he wasn't and… It wasn't necessarily that Natalie didn't like people, she had just learned to be self conscious around them from an early age. The more time she had spent around other people, the more she saw the oddities of her own life. So she had called him back, without her brain consulting her mouth on the matter.

Apparently once Natalie had opened the gate for him to sit in with her once, it had been an open ended invitation. At least, he took it as such. And as he showed up while she played, she found herself lingering behind as he took over the piano. The thing was, she may have gone six years without ever seeing or noticing him, but now that she had, she could not unsee him. He was everywhere. He was in all the classes he had said he was, he did frequent the music room, and she could even see him during her lunch period. She was fairly certain, despite her claims of creepiness, he was not actually stalking her.

So the music room turned into lunch turned into after school.

And then Henry had to go and fuck it all up. It's not like Natalie didn't know it was there. After all, she prided herself on, well, not being stupid. This unspoken limbo they were were currently in worked rather well for her. Maybe she took more after her father than she thought. So, yes, she knew there was a reason why Henry actively choose to spend time with her. Knew, yes. Understood? Not so much.

As long as it remained unspoken, Natalie could rationalize this all she wanted. They hung out because she never had someone to discuss music with, at least no one who she had known with any sort of expertise on the subject. They hung out because they were both loners and sometimes company could be good. They hung out because she wanted to avoid going home as much as possible.

Of course these weren't actually the reason, and Henry went and fucked it all up and she knew what was happening as it was happening and she just stood there. Because she wanted it to happen, and it wasn't even the first time she wanted it to happen. So she stood there because she wanted to be a normal girl who could be kissed by a boy she liked and…well, then anxiety got the best of her and she turned away.

This had been the fifth time Natalie had been unable to deny that she wanted to kiss Henry Grant.

The fourth time had happened several days earlier, when her after school practice had turned into a heated debate with Henry that had turned into them wandering around town, which had ended up with them at the movies. It wasn't a date. It was so not a date to the point where she did not even point out that it wasn't a date, because that would be acknowledging, on some level, that it potentially could be.

It could be fucking exhausting being Natalie Goodman.

This experience had been in a darkened, mostly empty theatre, sitting in the back with Henry while some insipid movie played on the screen. It really was no surprise to her that Henry would talk throughout the entire movie. He was just so open about his reactions to everything, even stupid little things to the movie, she had to wonder how exhausting it had to be him, too.

When it was over, they had stayed seated for a moment, and had turned to see if the other was getting up, maybe. And Natalie's breathing pattern changed, her pulse quickened and everything about the moment seemed absolutely frozen, and she couldn't muster up the energy to be in denial.

And then she sneezed.

It had been good to know her body was still trying to protect her, when her head and heart failed her.

The time before that had been the worst. Because he hadn't even done anything. It was, just, she had been in class, and this girl, Amy, who was on the swim team with her, had tapped her on the should to tell her that Henry was cute. Now, it wasn't unusual for the two girls to talk. She wasn't a complete freak, after all. Granted, most of their interactions frequented around swim season, so it wasn't completely unusual. However, Natalie was unaware of what relevance this information was to her.

Unless of course, this girl was interested in him. The thought had made her somewhat irritable because, as much as she complained about being invisible, she didn't like the thought of other people seeing her do something and making judgements based on that. During the past sixteen years, Natalie reclaimed her invisibility and made it work for her. While she was still in high school, she was perfectly comfortable with this system. It had also made her somewhat relieved, that someone could come take this Henry problem away from her.

Natalie's confusion must have shown on her face, because Amy had then shrugged and said she just thought something was going on between them. Natalie had rolled her eyes and said something sarcastic, which was sort of her default mode anyway. However, now someone else saw it she couldn't stop thinking about it and she would have the misfortune to run into him in the hallway.

And all she could do was think about what Amy had said, which hadn't even really been anything, and stare at his mouth. He didn't even really seem to notice, he was trying to navigate through the hallway while maintaining a stream of conversation she wasn't really following. Then she knew that she probably liked him, and did not have the patience or the necessary skills to deal with these kind of feelings, so she had ended up just walking away from him while he was in midsentence.

She wasn't sure if it was a good or bad thing, this probably didn't phase him.

The second time had been when they were eating lunch together. She couldn't even really remember when or why that had happened, rather that they just fell into some sort of routine without even meaning to. This was terrifying and should have been enough to keep Natalie away. But she still showed up.

But it had been, what had become a normal, scenario for them. Henry had a theory and/or philosophy for everything, and he liked to babble on about these things. She wasn't quite sure if it was because he liked to talk of such things, or if he felt the need to fill the silence.

Anyway, he had thrown a carrot stick at her, which she had deflected. And there was just a moment, a stupid moment, which had been broken by the bell and she had gathered up her belongings and split.

When it had come to fight or flee, Natalie had always been conditioned to run and hide.

The first time this desire to kiss Henry had broken threw her in a way she could no longer lie to herself, had been at the piano. It had been the first time she actually heard or saw him play. Typically he would hang around while she played, but she'd bolt when it was time to switch around. But this time, this time she had lingered and hung around while he played.

He played jazz, which she wasn't all that into. She liked things to be well defined, and that she could base how well she did something by a standard. If you were following emotion rather than sheet music, she would probably fail every time.

But he was talented, even she couldn't deny that. The thing Natalie Goodman learned about herself that day was that solid piano playing ability was a weakness for her because she had ignored any thoughts of Henry being something other than this person that she conversed with sometimes.

Henry had looked up at her, at one point, with his pot addled grin and she almost smiled back. And she knew she was absolutely fucked. Because much like before, when she had never noticed Henry, and now she couldn't unsee him. Now that she wanted to kiss him, she wasn't exactly sure how to stop.


End file.
